Today, Nick, a member of the Game Design team, will give you a sneak peek at
the process behind creating the stuff your characters wear. He also reveals a
brand new item.

There are a lot of reasons someone might play a game -- the pride you feel
when you overcome a challenge, the joy of discovery as you explore a new
world, the highs and lows of a well-told tale... the phat loot.

While certainly not universally applicable to Path of Exile players, it's
probably fair to say that better and more interesting loot is one of the main
driving forces for players of basically any ARPG. Watching that boss monster
explode in a shower of items, seeing that one of those items is that all-
important unique colour, and identifying it to discover what amazing
properties it has is, for many, a hugely memorable moment.

Designing awesome unique items is actually a rather tricky process. Your
typical unique can be broken down into a few basic components, but each of
these components has to work in unison for the item itself to really be
successful.

When we're starting an item design from scratch, because all three points have
to fit together, we can really start from any one of them. Let's use a real
example from an upcoming patch. Every new league we've done to date has had
some league-specific unique items, and with new leagues on the way, I was
tasked with coming up with those. I really liked the Berek's rings we created
in Domination and Nemesis, so I decided to make a "cycle" of new items, all
thematically linked together, for each of our upcoming leagues.

The idea for one of the cycles came very quickly and stemmed from how the
league they're in will function. The other, well, was a slower process of
discovery. Our artists made some 2D art and 3D models of some new weapons that
at that point were unattached to anything in game, and only tenuously attached
to anything we had planned. I decided that the visual style of these weapons
could work as the starting point for the design of these weapons.

So I knew what they looked like, but I didn't yet know what they'd do. Eyes
and teeth and flesh all have gameplay mechanics that could fit thematically. I
decided that life leech would be a good enough starting point. Scythes also
have cultural and historical connotations for "reaping", which implies cutting
something down for some gain -- fitting nicely with life leech, but leech
isn't the most interesting mechanic, even if is very useful. That is, unless,
it leeches a lot, but only sometimes:

I decided that perhaps it could work based on critical strikes -- you only
leech health when you critically strike. Immediately, the usefulness for a
weapon like this changes wildly between builds. It rewards some a lot more
than it rewards others.

But what if you weren't just leeching health now on crit, but potentially
leeching health for later too. Surgeon flasks are very popular for crit builds
for good reason -- they can be refilled in the middle of long fights. The idea
of turning every flask into a surgeons flask, as if your crits were siphoning
off some of the leech, was a very appealing idea, so the next mod I attached
was:

The low base critical strike chance of axes means that you won't necessarily
benefit from this very often. I could have certainly tossed some extra local
crit chance on there to compensate, but the weapon is all fleshy and alive-
looking. What do fleshy and alive-looking things do? They grow. They change.
Just like you.

This crit chance is global, so even at max level you're not likely to have a
ridiculously high critical-strike chance with this weapon. But the crits you
do get will be valuable to your survival. And, maybe this weapon is actually
more useful in other ways once you've levelled beyond the point where the
physical damage is relevant. Maybe it has changed.

There are two other items that will be coming out alongside The Harvest with
our next major patch, each with some transformative property. They're coming
to the next hardcore league. As many of our hardcore players are very
experienced, we expect they will see beyond the face value of the items and
find their true potential.

no he's talking about how early game you might be able to do a crit melee build with it, but as the crit chance starts getting high enough it becomes a really lucrative option for spellcasters/CoC builds.

I agree that it's not perfect for a CoC build... however, you can still get 50%+ crit chance with the weapon and use diamond flasks (which refill on crit) you should crit way more often making the only real negative point the attack speed. Was actually thinking of a lightning strike - coc - ethereal knives - added fire - chain build with hatred and grace/iron reflexes.

I know that you can't roll surgeon's on it.
Should've said that the unique would give you diamond flask charge on crit.

But the point still stands, you would have a pretty high crit chance with a diamond flask up and your spells would crit more often than a regular CoC build. It probably isn't the same damage as a "normal" CoC build (curse you slow attack speed!) BUT I think it would be a viable build. Especially with that life leech survivability.

They kind of did this with Pillar of the Caged God(s) as well. If you've never leveled a char with it, I highly recommend it! It is still the most fun char I think I've played, and that was before Molten Strike.

Well actually it's more like a unique that now fills in the major drawback to spellcasters, which is a lack of lifesteal options. Now we have options available, but certainly not the most powerful. they might want to reduce the crit chance a bit but it's still not as good as having a rare wand or sceptre

A little more than 20 nodes I expect? So probably more than 200% spell / ele damages equivalent. And all of that on a supposedly widely available item, as its low level means it will drop 6S in lvl 50 zones.

A few nodes more than 20, I'd say about 25 or so after factoring in travel nodes and such. Definitely more than 200 spell damage /ele damage that's for sure. Not to mention the insane leech you get for any damage means it's a 7L. I'd say BiS for discharge, and maybe fp/fireball and such.

Compared to 200% (218% perfect t1 rolls) global crit AND spell damage AND cast speed from wielding caster stick and shield. Or up to 378% with dual daggers, though then you're missing out on shield defensive stats and cast speed (just like you would with this axe).

So even versus a defensive setup the global crit advantage is less than half of what you're thinking of and almost non-existent versus daggers. And that's not counting all the other stats you'd be getting from usual caster gear that you'll have to make up for with passives.

I'd rate the axe as probably viable endgame option for casters. That's all due to the leech proc, but in order to make that work reliably you still have to get crit chance passives. You'll be critting a lot, but not particularly hard because you have no increased% or crit multi from your hand slots.

So, if you're like me and mostly dick around in standard because you don't expect to get far anywhere else, this is something you'll never see. It'll never drop for me, I'll probably never be able to afford it.

CoC builds will hate it lol.
It has low critchance, low aps and the leech isn't that relevant, you can simply use the gem.
Yes you lose a gemslot for leech, but the dps you lose with the axe is higher.

They've probably thought of that already. IIRC Diamond Flasks can't roll surgeons for the same reason, but if they leave that interaction in it would be REALLY good for Crit builds and I'm not opposed to that at all.

I'm not sure this Axe would be worth wielding for the 350~% increased global (spell) crit late game. Wand and ES shield can give you 210 "only", but with a lot of spell damage and cast speed on top, plus es/life and resists and block from the shield. If you really want the crit, a platinum Kris + ES shield can get you very close to 300%, without cast speed but still with all the other stats the axe is missing out on.

On the other hand, making all flasks surgeons (including diamonds) is ridiculously cool. Seethings could get a bit silly.

With JUST this weapon and a basic passive tree with +crit +Vaal Pact, you can hit 100% crit chance with 7 power charge Discharge at ~lvl 84-90, earlier if you have crit chance on ANY other gear. It's just sad this will be a HC only item, since it sounds like a TON of fun on a squishy Voll's Protector build.

100% crit discharge is possible but that's because crit weakness doesn't modify your crit chance, just your ability to crit a cursed target and Curse immunity seems (in my experience) to be one of the more common affixes for magic and rare mobs to get.

I might be wrong but I do not think so, he did a large number of designs for the initial pool (and probably some that are still unreleased due to balance) but I do not think he actively works for GGG at the moment.

This Article is very nice. I have to say though, I'd gladly spend my days spitting out unique items and stuff. I think it's not that of a challenge as described there is what I'm saying. Rather plain fun from my point of view.

Maybe sometimes, but I didn't mind the 2 set piece bonus (+12 attack rating per level) for the Angelic Ring. Wearing ring + another piece of Angelic Raiment is a big cost to neglect accuracy in physical builds.

LOL. You put this so perfectly. "It's got so much GLOBAL!!! Crit! It's perfect for CoC!" Cough, AS, cough

Meanwhile dischargers are creaming their pants and spell casters are laughing their way through lategame as they get a global extra link on both single and multi target skills, for pretty much no cost as the crit makes up for all the nodes they need to make up for defences/spell damage.

Let me see. 360% global crit strike chance, that's around 18 nodes worth. In 10ish nodes I can get around 140 spell damage. That makes up for that. I get a free 7L because I get life leech on all my crits. So I go discharge, crit every hit, get a 7L, maintain fine damage, and fuck everything up.

If you have, on a typical crit build, maybe 600% chance to crit (between passives, gear, power charges), with a 5% weapon you would normally have 35% chance to hit. On a high base crit weapon (maybe 8%), that gets put up to 56%. With this axe, at say, level 85, you get an extra 340% crit chance. This puts you at 52% chance to crit. That's pretty close to having the 8% crit chance base.

My point is that it ends up working about to be roughly the same when you compare the 4% global crit chance per level vs. having higher base crit on the weapon, while fitting a theme.

Cool unique, but with the way leech works I dont think the leech on crit is all that good. You crit, hit leech cap so you still leech at the cap just like a regular hit, then hit again and override the leech from the crit making it useless. Without leech stacking, its not all that great.

It won't work like the way you're describing. If you hit for 10,000,000 damage in 1 hit and proceed to begin leeching (assuming you don't get to full life, which ends your leeching regardless), and then swing again and hit for 10, the leech from the 10 hit doesn't override the leech from the 10,000,000 hit. You would just keep leeching from the bigger hit that is still in effect.